Homeless
Caught in the bloody
pincers of civil war,
Peru's Ashaninca Indians
(above) have borne the
brunt of fighting between
the military and leftist
Shining Path guerrillas.
Government-backed
Indian militias (left)
have helped quell the
insurgency. Even so, the
Ashaninca's heartland
isshattered: Thousands
are dead or displaced,
and survivors now crowd
fortified villages.
frenzy was pragmatic. Farther upriver, when the main stem of
the river became the Ucayali, I met a farmer who had once
turned to working coca. "I would buy it from the growers and
take it to the labs," he said. "I worked on commission. The
main transportation is the river. You put it in dried fish."
But some of the frenzy was deadly. Upstream from Iquitos,
people worried less about the cocaine war and more about a vio
lently impatient organization: the Shining Path guerrilla move
ment. Since the 1970s civil war has claimed at least 29,000
people in Peru, among them a few foreign tourists and many
poor Peruvians. Peruvian authorities told me that because of
Shining Path, the Tambo-the main stem of the Amazon above
the town of Atalaya-was a "red zone," and too dangerous for
my upstream journey.
But missionaries are sometimes as bold as soldiers, and I
found a missionary pilot named Jon Schmidt who flew me and
my interpreter, Ana Cecilia Gonzales Vigil, a Peruvian photo
journalist, up the Tambo. As we flew, he pointed out villages on
the map that had been destroyed by Shining Path-then landed
at one that had survived-so far. And there, again, I saw the
timeless courage that so marks life along this river.
The town was a small camp in a clearing, called Valle Esme
ralda. In the abrupt silence after the engine stopped, the people
of the village crowded around the plane, their faces bearing
paint. They were Ashaninca Indians. A leader introduced him
self. His name was Santiago Cororaw. He wore a shirt and
slacks. He was 22.
"This is the edge," he said. "Half an hour away are the ter
rorists." He pointed to the low hills nearby. "They're watching
us," he said.
The village was a group of palm huts. There an old chief asked
us for medicine. We had none to give him. "There is malaria, ty
phoid, hepatitis, and cholera here," he said. "Sometimes a mili
tary helicopter comes but not often enough." Nearby a woman
was making masato, a fermented drink of manioc and saliva.
At the edge of the forest was a bunker surrounded by sand
bags. An Ashaninca guard sat outside it. It was too hot to get in
it. Next to him was a bow and half a dozen arrows. I thought of
Shining Path guns.
"We only have three rifles," Santiago said. He reminded me
of Elcio; he also reminded me of Eva Santos.
HREE WEEKS LATER, after I took a canoe up a rapids to a
road, then rode a truck and a train into central Peru, almost
all the Amazon was below me.
On a windy May morning I, Ana Cecilia, and two others left
the Peruvian town of Yanque at sunup, riding horses slowly up a
narrow, rocky trail. Our companions were Mauricio de
Romana, a farmer and well-known guide, and a man named
Felipe, who tended the horses. We were in the highlands of
southern Peru, at about 11,000 feet.
Venus was still bright in the sky. We rode slowly through a vil
lage. Our horses' hoofs echoed off stone walls.
"Where are you going?" an old man shouted from a doorway.
"To Mismi," Mauricio said.
Amazon: South America's River Road